Did Your Job Description Go Out the Window During the Pandemic?

Many workers have been asked by their employers to do more in the past year—after a certain point, that can backfire

  

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The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2021 8:00 am ET [original article contains additional photos and on how to obtain additional information on the subject]  

Dana Barnett already had two roles at Maverick Pools, which builds swimming pools and spas, when the pandemic started: She was both its chief procurement officer and a project manager. But when the Chicago area locked down in March, her job ballooned even further. 

“It kind of happened naturally,” says Ms. Barnett, who is based in Barrington, Ill. She soon found herself knee-deep in administrative work, writing extra project proposals and sending client emails from her personal address rather than a shared company one, because she knew she would be the person answering the correspondence. Her pre-pandemic office usually ran from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., but she found herself regularly staying up until midnight.

This month, she accepted a competing job offer and had to prepare a list of her duties to train her replacement. It ran to two pages. Her replacement will take over her procurement role, leaving many of her other current duties vacant when she departs at month’s end.  

White-collar and front-line workers found themselves taking on unexpected duties beyond their original job description as the coronavirus abruptly transformed businesses and stretched many workforces thin. Today, many of them are re-evaluating their broader job demands. Some can ask for changes to their compensation, title or job description—but others may leave their overstuffed roles altogether.

The average workday increased by 8.2% in the pandemic’s early weeks, according to a study of 3.1 million people working from home around the world published by Harvard Business School in September. A full 93% of retail, e-commerce and fashion workers reported taking on additional responsibilities in 2020, in one December survey of 641 American workers by Airtable, a cloud collaboration service.

“Jobs have indeed expanded for many individuals, and what’s more, this expansion has often been done to individuals with no raises,” says Pamela Perrewé, a professor of management at Florida State University. “And given the pandemic, most workers were very reluctant to complain or leave their jobs, because they’re still scarce in many fields. Workers are feeling a bit trapped.”

Dr. Perrewé believes that the loose labor market made it difficult for workers to push back on additional tasks, since few wanted to try changing jobs amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. Jobs took a massive hit last spring and hiring slowed down in many industries for months, though it is rebounding today.

The nature of many jobs also changed dramatically during the sweeping lockdowns of 2020.

Talia Zito was a second-grade public school teacher in West Palm Beach, Fla. She says her workload doubled over the course of the pandemic. Last spring, she, like many other teachers, transitioned abruptly into virtual teaching. “And then we went back to school in the fall, the expectation in my district was something called simultaneous hybrid teaching, where we had to prepare virtual whiteboard and Zoom lessons on top of teaching in a physical classroom,” she says.

“My heart wasn’t in it at all,” she says. With two small kids at home and little ability to push back on her professional expectations, she quit in October with no backup plan.

Taking on too much at work can contribute to burnout, a widespread pandemic-era phenomenon. Over two-thirds of workers questioned experienced burnout symptoms while working from home, according to a July survey of 284 American workers by the jobs website Monster.com.

“Sometimes you have to manage your bosses,” Dr. Perrewé suggests. She says workers should try to set boundaries about concrete things like schedules and hours before moving on to specific tasks that they’ve absorbed during remote work. The key to such discussions is keeping track of everything. “Make a list of what exactly it is that you do in a workday,” she says 

Some employees found an upside in the unexpected expansion of their roles, like younger workers at startups who got to take on more meaningful responsibilities.

Mark Freeman II, a 26-year-old data scientist at Humu, a San Francisco startup focused on nudging workplace behavior, says he branched out during the pandemic into data engineering, a related but discrete field. The company needed more data engineers on projects, and he was eager to learn a new skill set on the job—while continuing his primary role as a data scientist.

“The main reason I went to a startup is to jump-start my career, so I was really happy to develop these extra skills,” he says.  

But even workers like him who relish their extracurricular roles may find it hard to get their actual title, compensation or job description adjusted if they wish to do so now.

Trying to get your actual job description changed remains a worthwhile goal, says Jason Davis, who runs an HR advisory firm in Buffalo Grove, Ill.

“It follows you inside the organization,” he says. “It’s used for so much beyond hiring, like your salary and the teams you’re on.”

Nearly all HR managers, he says, ought to be amenable to refreshing job descriptions and titles at least once a year, as due diligence. 

Managers who have seen their employees taking on more responsibilities should prepare to grant workers more autonomy and flexible remote-work arrangements, Dr. Perrewé says. She adds that they should be especially aware of this if their budget for raises remains tight.

Some of the excesses of remote-work bloat may be curbed as employees slowly go back to the office and get more facetime with their managers.

Meanwhile, some overburdened workers who don’t see their post-pandemic lives starting anytime soon may simply leave. A Microsoft study from March of over 30,000 workers around the world found that 40% were considering leaving their employer this year.

Ms. Zito, in Florida, did just that. In January, she started a new job at an educational technology company called the Art of Education University, helping to train school district administrators and teachers nationwide. “I love the flexibility now,” she says of her fully remote role. “There’s always a sense of guilt when you leave the teaching field, but the pressure and the stress and what it did to my own mental health was just too much.”

Write to Krithika Varagur at krithika.varagur@wsj.com